On our podcast today, Brian Ward, Steve Hayward and I talked about the obviously bogus polls that purport to show Barack Obama with a big lead in various swing states, even though those same polls show Romney winning independent voters by significant margins. Those results make sense only if enormous numbers of voters are signing up as Democrats. But is there any evidence of any such trend? Not at all; the evidence is entirely to the contrary. Hugh Hewitt, among others, has been talking about these data:

Voter registration in the Buckeye State is down by 490,000 people from four years ago. Of that reduction, 44 percent is in Cleveland and surrounding Cuyahoga County, where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one. …

Ohio is not alone. An August study by the left-leaning think tank Third Way showed that the Democratic voter registration decline in eight key swing states outnumbered the Republican decline by a 10-to-one ratio. In Florida, Democratic registration is down 4.9 percent, in Iowa down 9.5 percent. And in New Hampshire, it’s down down 19.7 percent. …

The Third Way study, which was conducted in August, indicates the Democrats’ drop in registered voters coincides with a gain in independent voters.

And all of the polls show that Romney is doing well with independent voters;